Indispensably Superfluous
by FullMentalPanic
Summary: If your presence is required, you might as well make a good showing. An alternate ending to Origins:Wolverine.


**Indispensably Superfluous**

By FullMentalPanic

Watching every one of the kids safely conducted off the site by helicopter, he reflected that there was nothing like being superfluous.

If the kids were being carted away to some other heinous location, he could probably take down the chopper without giving anyone inside something more serious than whiplash. That really didn't seem like the case though, and he'd stopped in the sunken walkway before obviously walking out into the clearing. He wasn't smitten with the idea of joining whatever club they were being whisked away to, so he decided to find somewhere else he could be useful.

He wanted to have a bigger role than just the chauffeur since he'd been roped into helping out. Granted, coming back to this island hadn't made it onto even the footnotes of any of his lists. He felt personally offended over anything that dragged him away from believing that life was anything less than an endless party. Being a non-negotiable guest in the underground cells and labs of this island had really dimmed the joie de vivre, and he resented anything that reminded him of it. Once dragged into the conflict though, he participated with full-on flair.

Dramatically dropping down from the sky in mid-attack had already been done the last time he touched base with Logan. Maybe this time he should try for a casually jogging up entrance...that was boringly lackluster, and besides it might get him there after the action was over. He bounced for a moment, feeding energy down to the soles of shoes, then took off. Kinetically fueled leaps were one way of getting around, but simply gearing his boots to rise and fall more quickly than normal worked better when keeping your head down might be a priority. He really didn't know what kind of situation he'd be walking into where Logan was concerned, and this island set him on edge.

Skimming over the ground and around the recently reworked landscape, he rapidly arrived where he figured things would probably go down. He swept into the shadow of one of the monumental slabs of debris and hooked a glance around the corner, just in case it would be more effective to knock a bad guy out from behind then to jump into the open and pull all hostile and lethal attention to himself. It seemed he'd missed the main throw down in spite of his hurry. Logan was walking into the sunrise with a woman he clearly cared a lot about in his arms. This had a lot going for it he decided, what was an iconic solitary stalk into the sunset worth when you could sail into the dawning light with someone you cherished? That aside, the situation left Remy feeling distinctly like a third wheel.

As much as he didn't like tricycles, what ruined the scene even more was the gleaming barrel of a gun aimed at Logan's back. Behind the weapon was someone he wouldn't have minded never seeing again. Stryker, the head honcho, someone who should have been at the very top of the hit list Logan had claimed he was going to carry out. Showed what a 'gentleman's' word was worth these days. Looked like that oversight was about to punch through the back of Logan's skull.

It was a prompt to action if Remy had ever seen one. He shot forward. The scrape of his boots against the ground alerted Stryker to his presence, and the man whirled, firearm centering on the sprinting Cajun. Remy sprang to the side and kicked a smattering of dust at his target, not having time to charge it to do more than pop in blistering, small explosions, and swept his coat in front of him as he heard the gun go off. He drew what little kinetic energy there was in his swinging coat up toward his sleeve, and when the bullets collided with the fabric their momentum was siphoned there as well. He got a glimpse of Stryker stumbling back from the peppered stings of the dust as he snagged one of the now powerless slugs as it dropped to the ground. He didn't have any intention of hanging onto the energy swirling around his sleeve, and flung it to a much better home, by way of the snatched bullet, right behind Stryker's forehead.

The man fell back and Remy straightened as the crawling sensation of having killed someone squirmed over him. It wouldn't last long. Knowing you'd eliminated an evil threat to humanity did wonders for the conscience. He rubbed some of the lingering energy out of his fingertips and turned with a wry smile to where Logan and his lady friend were staring at him.

"Sir, it seems you're proving to be a liar. I remember you saying that you were going to kill everyone."

"Just spreading the joy, leaving some justice to be carried out by other interested parties."

"Generous," he chuckled. "Not to burst your whole aura of confident purpose, but you're walking toward the side of the island without a bridge. Swimming is all well and good but I'm thinking your lady friend would want to leave before she gets too many bloodstains on her clothes."

"I've made arrangements, the guy who taxied me here will be coming around with his plane in a minute."

"How fortunate that you thought of that in advance. Good thing you thought to have him watch your back too, just in case anyone was thinking about putting a bullet in it."

"I would have been fine."

"Nice to know I'm superfluous," Remy smirked. He really wasn't going to be missing Logan's company, but he wasn't going to waltz off the scene leaving an injured woman to well-intentioned but unplanned mercies. He touched two fingers to his forehead in lieu of tipping his hat. "I think you can enjoy about seven minutes of sunrise before I swing round with some wings."

"Hey...you came back. You didn't have to do that."

So there was a sense of gratitude buried under all those gruff demands. "It's all about playing the odds. If one guy gets the chance to walk into the sunrise with a lovely lady in his arms who's to say it's impossible for anyone else? And if it happened because of my help, karma's harvest should reach me eventually."

A half-smile slunk onto Logan's face, though it was mostly directed at the not-quite-dying woman leaning into him. A medically destined plane ride really did seem like it would be beneficial. Maybe Logan would have come out of it as scarless as usual and managed to get his lady to safety without any assistance, but Remy had stepped in before that possibility could play out. Even if his actions were ultimately unnecessary, Remy awarded himself a mental pat on the back for affecting the outcome.

* * *

A/N: 'Joie de vivre': joy of living. I recently re-watched Origins: Wolverine and this sprang up. When writing this, I really knew next to nothing about Gambit, but his character seemed so classy-awesome I wanted to give him more influence on the storyline, hopefully without grossly misrepresenting him. As Origins and the X-men movies in general seem to proclaim, who cares about canon anyway?


End file.
